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Children in Reindeer Woods
Eleven-year-old Billie lives at a ‘temporary home for children’ called Children in Reindeer Woods, which she discovers one afternoon, to her surprise, is in the middle of a war zone. When a small group of paratroopers kill everyone who lives there with her, and then turn on each other, Billie is forced to learn to live with the violent, innocent, and troubled Rafael, who decides to abandon the soldier’s life and become a farmer, no matter what it takes.
A lyrical and continually surprising take on the absurdity of war and the mysteries of childhood, Children in Reindeer Woods is a moving modern fable.
A lyrical and continually surprising take on the absurdity of war and the mysteries of childhood, Children in Reindeer Woods is a moving modern fable.
198 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
4 people are currently reading
408 people want to read
About the author
Kristín Ómarsdóttir
42 books47 followersKristín grew up in Hafnarfjörður. She studied Literature and Spanish at the University of Iceland, then pursued Spanish at the Universities of Barcelona and Copenhagen. She has published poetry, novels, short stories and plays.
Her first publication was the poetry book Í húsinu okkar er þoka (There is Fog in Our House) in 1987, and her first novel, Svartir brúðarkjólar (Black Wedding Dresses) came out in 1992.
Kristín has won many awards for her work, including the DV Cultural Prize for Literature for her 1998 novel Elskan mín ég dey (I Will Die, my Love).
Kristín has worked with other artists, such as the photographer Nanna Bisp Büchert, with whom she produced the book Sérstakur dagur (Special Day), in which poetry and photographs work together. She has also collaborated with Haraldur Jónsson on the film The Secret Lives of Icelanders.
Her first publication was the poetry book Í húsinu okkar er þoka (There is Fog in Our House) in 1987, and her first novel, Svartir brúðarkjólar (Black Wedding Dresses) came out in 1992.
Kristín has won many awards for her work, including the DV Cultural Prize for Literature for her 1998 novel Elskan mín ég dey (I Will Die, my Love).
Kristín has worked with other artists, such as the photographer Nanna Bisp Büchert, with whom she produced the book Sérstakur dagur (Special Day), in which poetry and photographs work together. She has also collaborated with Haraldur Jónsson on the film The Secret Lives of Icelanders.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
May 13, 2012
Three soldiers walk up to a house in the woods. An old woman who lives in the house offers them food, drink, a place to sit down and against all the rules of civilized hospitality, and in the kind of action that drives Greek Tragedy and propels stories like George RR Martin's along, the soldiers act like really bad guests. They open fire on the old women, a couple of adults, some children and dogs and kill all of them but one little girl who runs off and hides. One of the soldiers then turns around and kills his two companions. Finds the girl, tells her everything is ok and they start to live together in the house, him giving up the life of a solider to try being a farmer, and the girl as his friend.
This isn't really a spoiler, this is the first couple of pages of the book.
The soldier has awful headaches, and may or may not be totally insane. The girl may be retarded. There is some kind of war going on, the kind you hear about in Central American and African countries, with insurgents and government troops and not a whole lot of discipline and difficulty drawing any objective line between good guys and bad guys. The war is going on but it doesn't really touch the house in the woods where a few adults lived and took care of some children who had been entrusted to their care for some reason or another.
Very little information about why anything is the way it is is given in the book. It doesn't help that much of the book is seen through the perspective of the little girl, who may or may not be retarded and from the things the soldier tells the little girl, that may or may not be true, or if it is true it's true from the perspective of someone possibly harboring delusions and paranoia. But the outside world is just something that needs to be shut out for the most part in the book, and when it does start to intrude or pop in for a visit usually things aren't going to go well.
The book isn't difficult at all, but the lack of being able to place the action, the unreliability of the two principle characters and the almost fairy-tale like style the story is told in make it difficult to really get a firm grasp on the book. The book never seemed to welcome me in to it. But normally when I get this feeling from a book it's because the book is intentionally trying to be cold, or it's going out of its way to be too innovative, too much in love with its own cleverness to let a not so smart reader such as myself in on the secret needed to open up the text. Maybe this book just felt pre-occupied, like it was something going on between the two characters that we are invited to watch but sort of in the same way you can watch a couple of little kids playing a game that has no discernible sense to you, but it's obvious that the kids know what is going on but if you were asked to join in you'd stand there like the befuddled adult you are and have no idea what you were supposed to do. That's sort of a weak analogy, because it's not that there isn't sense to the novel, there is, but maybe it's just confusing because the logic of the story, the perspectives, the dialogue is being refracted through a child (whom may or may not be retarded), and an adult who is most likely batshit.
August 14, 2021
This was a harrowing read for me, even though the tone is flat and simple. In the first scene an 11 year old girl watches a soldier murder everyone she knows; after the carnage, the soldier suddenly decides to desert his post and to take the place of those he murdered, because he's tired of the war and wants to be a farmer. He coerces the surviving girl to play the part of his daughter, and as the novel progresses their relationship evolves in surprising ways.
The story reminded me a great deal of An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans, for the way it shows how incessant violence warps and shatters any kind of natural human feeling. Unlike Hilbig's novel, though, this story focuses on a child's perceptions of war, which made the story all the more disturbing to me.
The writing is very flat. It mimics the passing musings of a child playing with her dolls, or worrying about what to wear on any given day, or what the rules of decorum are for a proper 11 year old girl...only the events witnessed by this child are horrific.
There is a level of abstraction to the story that took some getting used to. It's a fictional war held in a fictional valley. Somehow this abstraction didn't distance me from the human happenings, though. Instead, it felt like an appropriate tone to remind me of how war brings with it the relentless, relentlessly casual, and nearly abstract murder of others. The detached tone felt right, in that people in war will detach from horrific events as a way to cope.
The story reminded me a great deal of An Untouched House by Willem Frederik Hermans, for the way it shows how incessant violence warps and shatters any kind of natural human feeling. Unlike Hilbig's novel, though, this story focuses on a child's perceptions of war, which made the story all the more disturbing to me.
The writing is very flat. It mimics the passing musings of a child playing with her dolls, or worrying about what to wear on any given day, or what the rules of decorum are for a proper 11 year old girl...only the events witnessed by this child are horrific.
There is a level of abstraction to the story that took some getting used to. It's a fictional war held in a fictional valley. Somehow this abstraction didn't distance me from the human happenings, though. Instead, it felt like an appropriate tone to remind me of how war brings with it the relentless, relentlessly casual, and nearly abstract murder of others. The detached tone felt right, in that people in war will detach from horrific events as a way to cope.
July 17, 2012
Imagine a hike in Reindeer Woods.
The sky is clear. Creatures creep and call and chatter around you, complemented by small and sometimes irritating insect doings. You wear a backpack that is well-stocked. You are rested, and you feel ready to walk for many hours. Beside you are some new acquaintances. You listen to what they have to say, and you ponder what has been said. You have every intention of making the most of this shared experience, and of keeping these people in memory.
Together, you walk through Reindeer Wood. Everything is sharp and distinct beneath a clear sky. New smells reach you, some of them pungent, and at times you stop and linger at the edge of these new miasmas, sampling with care. Parsing this different sensation.
The way starts to steepen. The more your companions talk--which is not often--the less you understand them. You offer, Hey, let's take this hill together. No one listens. In fact, some of them take off in different directions without a word or a gesture. Eventually, they step back onto the path--again, without commentary. In time, you grow used to these erratic peregrinations; sometimes, you don't even realize if someone is around or not.
The sky is darkening, and still you walk. A few signs along the way suggested an inchoate direction or destination, but the path has since become overgrown by plants and roots, covered in the various detritus the forest casts off daily. You are not sure if you are still on the same path, or any path to begin with. Your companions have forgotten you, and you are ready to do the same. You are tired, a little sore, and your mind is on other things. Like, Should I get toothpaste, or can I squeeze just a little more out of the tube..?
Before you know it, you've taken the last turn and reached an exit out of Reindeer Woods. Your companions continue without you, circling one another like planetary bodies, in sync but many miles away from one another. You think back on your hike, and you remember little, if anything. All that you know is that you have put some miles on your feet.
* * * * *
My read-ometer, likewise, reads 192 more miles and one more trip. And now this book goes on the shelf, this review gets posted, and I head to other places.
The sky is clear. Creatures creep and call and chatter around you, complemented by small and sometimes irritating insect doings. You wear a backpack that is well-stocked. You are rested, and you feel ready to walk for many hours. Beside you are some new acquaintances. You listen to what they have to say, and you ponder what has been said. You have every intention of making the most of this shared experience, and of keeping these people in memory.
Together, you walk through Reindeer Wood. Everything is sharp and distinct beneath a clear sky. New smells reach you, some of them pungent, and at times you stop and linger at the edge of these new miasmas, sampling with care. Parsing this different sensation.
The way starts to steepen. The more your companions talk--which is not often--the less you understand them. You offer, Hey, let's take this hill together. No one listens. In fact, some of them take off in different directions without a word or a gesture. Eventually, they step back onto the path--again, without commentary. In time, you grow used to these erratic peregrinations; sometimes, you don't even realize if someone is around or not.
The sky is darkening, and still you walk. A few signs along the way suggested an inchoate direction or destination, but the path has since become overgrown by plants and roots, covered in the various detritus the forest casts off daily. You are not sure if you are still on the same path, or any path to begin with. Your companions have forgotten you, and you are ready to do the same. You are tired, a little sore, and your mind is on other things. Like, Should I get toothpaste, or can I squeeze just a little more out of the tube..?
Before you know it, you've taken the last turn and reached an exit out of Reindeer Woods. Your companions continue without you, circling one another like planetary bodies, in sync but many miles away from one another. You think back on your hike, and you remember little, if anything. All that you know is that you have put some miles on your feet.
* * * * *
My read-ometer, likewise, reads 192 more miles and one more trip. And now this book goes on the shelf, this review gets posted, and I head to other places.
July 31, 2020
This is a very strong 'life during wartime' novel that begins in a brutal way.
In an unnamed country during an unspecified war three soldiers come across a small and very isolated farm acting as an orphanage, with the name 'Children In Reindeer Woods', a place that the war has not yet arrived to. Two of the soldiers pretty much instantly kill everyone, accept one small girl who manages to hide. The third soldier is appalled, turns on his comrades and shoots them, and thereby deserting the war and his army. This happens all in the first couple of pages. The sense of violence imprints itself so strongly that you come to expect that what is lovely and peaceful could at any time henceforth be shattered by horror.
This is a story of survival, coping in the face of extreme adversity; of Rafael, the soldier with his new life as a farmer, and of Billie, an intelligent 11 year old girl who regresses frequently into a fantasy world with her dolls and the life she has know before. Their relationship develops as they realise they need each other, but sister-brother rather than any type of sexual awakening for Billie.
Ómarsdóttir's writing is to subtle for this to become a thriller, or horror, and rather than engaging in tense, creepy moments or gore, she opts to delve into two very human characters, less committed to one another than they to the limbo that they find themselves in. As the novel proceeds the dialogue between them becomes more and more similar to the conversation Billie invents for her dolls, blurring the sense of reality and the theme that Ómarsdóttir chiefly addresses, the place of law, order and morality in the midst of war.
In an unnamed country during an unspecified war three soldiers come across a small and very isolated farm acting as an orphanage, with the name 'Children In Reindeer Woods', a place that the war has not yet arrived to. Two of the soldiers pretty much instantly kill everyone, accept one small girl who manages to hide. The third soldier is appalled, turns on his comrades and shoots them, and thereby deserting the war and his army. This happens all in the first couple of pages. The sense of violence imprints itself so strongly that you come to expect that what is lovely and peaceful could at any time henceforth be shattered by horror.
This is a story of survival, coping in the face of extreme adversity; of Rafael, the soldier with his new life as a farmer, and of Billie, an intelligent 11 year old girl who regresses frequently into a fantasy world with her dolls and the life she has know before. Their relationship develops as they realise they need each other, but sister-brother rather than any type of sexual awakening for Billie.
Ómarsdóttir's writing is to subtle for this to become a thriller, or horror, and rather than engaging in tense, creepy moments or gore, she opts to delve into two very human characters, less committed to one another than they to the limbo that they find themselves in. As the novel proceeds the dialogue between them becomes more and more similar to the conversation Billie invents for her dolls, blurring the sense of reality and the theme that Ómarsdóttir chiefly addresses, the place of law, order and morality in the midst of war.
May 28, 2016
I feel I am as yet unable to give this book a rating. I have not had enough time to truly process it. Thought-provoking? Absolutely. Gripping? Without a doubt. I am just not completely sure that I understand all of the implications at the end of this novel.
Children in Reindeer Woods is an Icelandic novel, which very unusually is not set in Iceland. Its setting is vaguely European, and many languages and phrases from different countries run through it. I believe that this book is in itself an anti-war statement in the most general sense.
Deaths are seemingly random and at times unpredictable. Characters are often suffering from PTSD, especially Billie, the child, and Rafael, the soldier.
Search for redemption on Raphael's part, Billie's skills of survival in an uncontrollable situation, Abraham the jurist who is writing the laws of the planet for the puppeteers on another planet, and characters who wander through the novel are all a part of this dystopic landscape of war and its effects.
The writing is exceptional, and the translation runs very smoothly.
The plot leaves you guessing and trying to make sense of a senseless world.
Children in Reindeer Woods is an Icelandic novel, which very unusually is not set in Iceland. Its setting is vaguely European, and many languages and phrases from different countries run through it. I believe that this book is in itself an anti-war statement in the most general sense.
Deaths are seemingly random and at times unpredictable. Characters are often suffering from PTSD, especially Billie, the child, and Rafael, the soldier.
Search for redemption on Raphael's part, Billie's skills of survival in an uncontrollable situation, Abraham the jurist who is writing the laws of the planet for the puppeteers on another planet, and characters who wander through the novel are all a part of this dystopic landscape of war and its effects.
The writing is exceptional, and the translation runs very smoothly.
The plot leaves you guessing and trying to make sense of a senseless world.
May 2, 2014
I read this along with the The World's Literature group here in GoodReads, where we are reading Icelandic lit in 2014. This book is written by an Icelander, but takes place in an unnamed place and time. It can't be Iceland because it has borders with war going on, and it can't be too far in the past because they mention computers.
The two main characters are Rafael, a paratrooper who comes to a home, kills all but one person, and decides to become a farmer and not return to the military life. Billie is the 11-year old girl left alive at the farm. Her self-image is disturbingly low in a very matter-of-factual way, and she mentions several times that she "might be retarded." Instead she is very well-spoken and mature and seems to know how to keep herself alive.
I felt sympathy for Rafael, and fear. Nothing seems real, everything may be allegory, but I think a bit of it got lost in translation.
The two main characters are Rafael, a paratrooper who comes to a home, kills all but one person, and decides to become a farmer and not return to the military life. Billie is the 11-year old girl left alive at the farm. Her self-image is disturbingly low in a very matter-of-factual way, and she mentions several times that she "might be retarded." Instead she is very well-spoken and mature and seems to know how to keep herself alive.
I felt sympathy for Rafael, and fear. Nothing seems real, everything may be allegory, but I think a bit of it got lost in translation.
July 20, 2015
DISCLAIMER: I am the publisher of the book and thus spent approximately two years reading and editing and working on it. So take my review with a grain of salt, or the understanding that I am deeply invested in this text and know it quite well. Also, I would really appreciate it if you would purchase this book, since it would benefit Open Letter directly.
July 28, 2012
I try to avoid stereotypes—positive or negative—especially cultural stereotypes. There are valid reasons sometimes why these stereotypes were assigned, but there are quite a few that were meant only to harm. That being said, I've tried to ignore that stigma of oddness placed on Icelanders. Sure an Internet search on famous Icelanders and Icelandic attractions may lead you to believe they're all a little strange, but surely they all cannot be, right?
Children in Reindeer Woods is odd. There may be some translation issues here, but largely I get the feeling that Ómarsdóttir is, how we say it... peculiar. That's cool, I'm down with odd. Bjork, Twin Peaks, Regina Spektor (she used to be weirder)--yeah, I like odd. I'm cultural except when I'm not. Like when I turn my head to the side, scrunch my face and say “I just don't get it.” As I type this, thinking about Children in Reindeer Woods, I have my head turned to the side, my face is scrunched and I'm thinking “I just didn't get it.” I understand some of what Ómarsdóttir may have been trying to accomplish, but much of it seemed like trying to be strange for the sake of being strange. Then again, maybe it was all issue with the translation.
I don't drink. I never have, not once, so my analogy may be ridiculous. But Reindeer Woods reminded me of stories I've heard about alcohol. It sounded really fun. I looked forward to it and the second I had a copy in my hands, I dove into it. It had its moments when it was good, but largely I was immediately overcome with a thought of “I have to finish this?” I wanted to be cool so I kept plugging away. Despite the headache I finished it. And you know what? I don't know what the hell happened. Sure, I remember a detail here, a detail there, but largely it's all a blur.
Reindeer Woods isn't bad, its just confusing (in its English form). It doesn't do anything miraculous or leave you feeling anything but boredom. It's like that movie... looking up name of movie... Northfork, that's it! Visually beautiful, well acted, but confusing. You have to respect the vision of the artists who come up with these pieces, and know it probably means a lot to them, but that doesn't make it enjoyable.
Sorry Iceland, but you're a strange little island.
Children in Reindeer Woods is odd. There may be some translation issues here, but largely I get the feeling that Ómarsdóttir is, how we say it... peculiar. That's cool, I'm down with odd. Bjork, Twin Peaks, Regina Spektor (she used to be weirder)--yeah, I like odd. I'm cultural except when I'm not. Like when I turn my head to the side, scrunch my face and say “I just don't get it.” As I type this, thinking about Children in Reindeer Woods, I have my head turned to the side, my face is scrunched and I'm thinking “I just didn't get it.” I understand some of what Ómarsdóttir may have been trying to accomplish, but much of it seemed like trying to be strange for the sake of being strange. Then again, maybe it was all issue with the translation.
I don't drink. I never have, not once, so my analogy may be ridiculous. But Reindeer Woods reminded me of stories I've heard about alcohol. It sounded really fun. I looked forward to it and the second I had a copy in my hands, I dove into it. It had its moments when it was good, but largely I was immediately overcome with a thought of “I have to finish this?” I wanted to be cool so I kept plugging away. Despite the headache I finished it. And you know what? I don't know what the hell happened. Sure, I remember a detail here, a detail there, but largely it's all a blur.
Reindeer Woods isn't bad, its just confusing (in its English form). It doesn't do anything miraculous or leave you feeling anything but boredom. It's like that movie... looking up name of movie... Northfork, that's it! Visually beautiful, well acted, but confusing. You have to respect the vision of the artists who come up with these pieces, and know it probably means a lot to them, but that doesn't make it enjoyable.
Sorry Iceland, but you're a strange little island.
January 14, 2016
Darkly surreal, emotionally dangerous, yet somehow quaint, very human, and emotionally accessible, 'Children in Reindeer Woods' is a very powerful book. There's a fairy tale quality that lightens the mood, making child's play of the almost inhuman violence. Yes, it is obviously anti-war, but it never slides into didacticism. It prances playfully through the blood. It places the reader in an ethically gray area. We must approach the book with the nativity of the narrator, which is made easier by the childlike linguistic turns, in order to fully understand the author's vision.
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October 30, 2012"The mood is disconcerting. Children in Reindeer Woods, Kristín Ómarsdóttir’s first novel to be translated from Icelandic into English, remains unsettling to the very end." - Shaun Randol, New York
This book was reviewed in the November 2012 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/RrA8cR
This book was reviewed in the November 2012 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/RrA8cR
April 15, 2014
My three-star rating is a placeholder and will likely be adjusted up. I'm not sure I really understand this book, but the writing was lovely, albeit slightly uncomfortable at moments. I'm really not sure what to make of it. I need time to think about it and time to discuss it with friends in the Worlds Lit group, which is why I read this.
April 5, 2017
It is always baffling to me how novels that are not well written with so little story to them get published; nevertheless, they do. This is one of them, from Iceland and translated into English, by author Kristin Omarsdottir. The first two pages are about three soldiers who kill every adult, every child, with the exception of one, and the family dog in a farmhouse they visit, and then one of the soldiers decides to kill the other two soldiers as well. The rest of the story is about the one soldier, the psychopath, and his creepy relationship with the 11 year old girl who, inexplicably, is allowed to live. Other than the moments in which the story is punctuated by violence (more murdered people and one murdered chicken - to teach the other chickens a lesson, I kid you not), this novel, for me, was the worst thing a novel can be: BORING.
August 13, 2016
The story's setting is more a fantasy then a relevant place in real life. Even the book of earthly laws created by the main character's father seems so far from actual practice that it's laughable. An ex-soldier and a slightly retarded eleven-year-old girl are the sole survivors of the soldier's evil deeds at a remote farmhouse during wartime. While the story might make excuses for the soldier's stress under duress and his being formerly thwarted from his desired life as a farmer, he progresses little on the road to enlightenment. He does want to be "clean" of his murders by penalizing himself for each one, but it's the best his consciousness can presently reach. After he comes to the decision that violent murdering is wrong, he apparently continues the habit. He is just an evil character.
Meanwhile, the girl is at this temporary home for children, and the narrative tells a lot about her parents, her mother being a doctor and her father a (amateur) jurist, who writes the laws for every aspect of an enlightened society. He apparently has a fantasy connection with the puppeteers of another planet who move his limbs. He's also somewhat of the artistic type in his writing down for his daughter Billie how people might like to live in a fairer, utopia-like society.
Rafael the soldier well maintains the farm, keeps the house spic and span, and sees to the child's physical and emotional needs, but retains that sinful nature towards adult characters. Lofty, intellectual organization of a book of laws he reads but finds them laughably impractical and unreal. Except for Rafael's evil streak, it's an unusual, meaningful read, and is very well done. It's a nice mix of fantasy and practicality.
Meanwhile, the girl is at this temporary home for children, and the narrative tells a lot about her parents, her mother being a doctor and her father a (amateur) jurist, who writes the laws for every aspect of an enlightened society. He apparently has a fantasy connection with the puppeteers of another planet who move his limbs. He's also somewhat of the artistic type in his writing down for his daughter Billie how people might like to live in a fairer, utopia-like society.
Rafael the soldier well maintains the farm, keeps the house spic and span, and sees to the child's physical and emotional needs, but retains that sinful nature towards adult characters. Lofty, intellectual organization of a book of laws he reads but finds them laughably impractical and unreal. Except for Rafael's evil streak, it's an unusual, meaningful read, and is very well done. It's a nice mix of fantasy and practicality.
June 26, 2012
Within the first two pages of Children in Reindeer Woods in quick succession two women, three children, one man, one dog, and two soldiers are brutally murdered. When the dust finally settles the only ones left standing are an eleven year old girl named Billie who may or may not be mentally handicapped and a soldier named Rafael who may or may not be completely deranged. The remaining one hundred ninety five pages chronicle their disturbingly fascinating story.
Where is this farm house that doubles as a foster care facility for children actually located? How and why were the children selected to be placed there? Who are the soldiers engaged in a war with and for what purpose? These seemingly important details are left strangely unexplained, forcing the reader to jump headfirst into the story without a sense of balance. From this distorted entry point just how does one ascertain who the good guys are? Things only get trickier as the novel progresses.
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http://www.opinionless.com/book-revie...
Where is this farm house that doubles as a foster care facility for children actually located? How and why were the children selected to be placed there? Who are the soldiers engaged in a war with and for what purpose? These seemingly important details are left strangely unexplained, forcing the reader to jump headfirst into the story without a sense of balance. From this distorted entry point just how does one ascertain who the good guys are? Things only get trickier as the novel progresses.
READ MORE:
http://www.opinionless.com/book-revie...
December 23, 2016
This slim, strange novel gave me awesome nightmares. Which I mean in the best way. Worth the read just for the scenes of Barbies talking to each other ("Sara: I had to host this party, my darling cinnamon bun, so that no one would think I'm retarded."), but also for its unsettling, often hilarious, and sometimes terrifying visions of girlhood, the idealized/idyllic country life, and wartime. Ómarsdóttir is also a poet and a playwright, and the novel has the qualities of both: a hallucinatory feeling to the story, terrific dialogue, a loose trajectory unbound by the arcs and closures of conventional novels. Very well translated from the original Icelandic by Lytton Smith, high-quality production and great design from Open Letter.
August 9, 2016
This is an anti-government, anti-war fable set in modern times. Though I can't say I truly enjoyed the book, it was definitely thought provoking.
February 6, 2013
It seems like quite an idyllic life there on the farm for Rafael and Billie. He's a retired soldier, she has just turned eleven --- although a very astute eleven (she can discourse on the fifth article of the declaration of human rights).
There is a cow to milk, a cat to cuddle with, chickens to feed, eggs to gather, crops to grow. The ground is fertile, the farm is isolated, there in Reindeer Woods.
In the time we are with them, there are only four visitors, including a nun who promptly falls in love with Rafael, spends the night with him, and just as promptly goes away.
Only there's something a little fishy here. Well, maybe a lot. Because Raphael first appeared on the farm with two other soldiers. Of the people living there, "Four children, an older woman, and a young man head out from the house with their hands clasped behind their backs." Another woman appears with a tray with coffee, bread, butter, boiled eggs for them to eat.
The soldiers immediately shoot and kill them all --- except one of the children (Billie). The three soldiers go into the house, and one of them shoots and kills the other two. Billie hides in the bushes, "wets herself."
When Rafael digs a trench outside to bury all the bodies --- including his two former comrades --- she comes out of the bushes and stands behind him. He turns.
"Good evening, I am Rafael," said the man in the blue turtle-neck sweater, holding out his hand.
"Good evening, I am Billie," said the girl; she curtsied and shook his hand. The chicken tripped over to them. It didn't want to let itself get separated from its new friend ...
If you think that Rafael let the eleven-year-old Billie survive the mass killing because he has some devious plans for her then you don't know Kristín Ómarsdóttir. I didn't either.
Now I do, and am not so sure I want to. For this is one of the whackiest books I have come across in many years of whacky books. A soldier more or less immune to murder (although he does shoot off a few of his toes to try to break himself of the habit of murdering people.) A girl who seems unimpressed by his murderous history; in fact, seems to find him a quite pleasant companion (he will often play Barbie dolls with her).
He only turns a little menacing when she starts ragging on him about the nun who appeared one day, then disappeared:
Did she ask you about me?...
She asked whether I was your brother.
And what did you say?
Yes, that I was your brother. Then she asked me countless questions which I couldn't answer without giving myself away.
Why didn't you tell her the truth?
Then I would have had to kill her. You don't kill nuns. I could never justify that before a court of law, let alone myself.
Why don't you try to tell the truth to those around you and then not kill people?
Perhaps.
If you meet her again?
Then I'll tell her the truth.
You promise?
Yes.
Why didn't you rape her?
Don't behave like that, child.
As you may have gathered, Children in Reindeer Woods is as zany as they come. We learn nothing about Rafael's past: he certainly isn't volunteering any information to Billie (nor the reader). We learn a little about the people who have been knocked off but Billie is obviously not impressed by their bloody end (which she witnessed) nor their mass burial.
What we learn about her parents --- off someplace else --- isn't much help. She is convinced that her father is a puppet (strings and all) and her memories of him and her talky mother --- a doctor by trade --- are scattered. And weird.
She keeps asking Rafael if she is retarded, but what with her lists, her brainy ideas and insights, and her strange interests lead us to believe that she not so much retarded as autistic.
A monologue that she gives to the chickens while she is cleaning their hut is right out of Alice in Wonderland:
Good day, little chickens. I am the spring-man. I suppose I should vacuum, in here. Today's Saturday, and that's when people clean their residences and also the hen houses, though less frequently since animal-kind has fewer requirements. Perhaps because nature is expected to see to cleaning itself. But how are you going to get swept? God's natural brush, storms, never reach in here, do they? Poor you. In your shitty beds. But I still envy you. A little. Not much. A little.
§ § §
The tension here is two-fold. Is Rafael going to take it into his head to wake up and shoot Billie dead? Or is he going to show that he spared her life so he can ravish her? Let me just hint at the answers to these questions so you will get this one and find out for yourself. Because, despite all its alarums and diversions, Children in Reindeer Woods is quite wonderful.
The main tension set in place by this author is: how weird can a story get before finally getting overloaded and top-heavy and skittering off the road and crashing into a gully and setting the world on fire?
Ómarsdóttir is a poet and painter, lives in Iceland. Maybe it's all those dark winters amid the Arctic massifs that turn one's ideas on plotting and character into oatmeal mush. Or Þorrablót with hangikjöt, the favored eats there in Iceland.
The closest I can come to paralleling this mayhem would be the play Der Besuch der alten Dame, from the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It was produced to much horror and alarm fifty years ago in staid Zurich. The first scene is rich Claire coming to town to reclaim her old lover Alfred Ill. Claire expounds on her ex-husbands Moby, Hoby, and Zoby, then talks the villagers into helping her extinguish poor Alfred. One of her first acts as she gets off the train is to reach down and unscrew her hand. (In perhaps unconscious tribute, Ómarsdóttir offers a scene set in a nearby gas station with a collection of disjointed right and left arms, where one of the locals sticks his disjointed head in a waste basket).
Children in Reindeer Woods has that same dada feel to it. It's a place where Tristan Tzara meets Kafka meets Catch-22 meets Edgar Allen Poe meets a bewildered audience (me). But despite all these screwy side-trips, I think Ómarsdóttir's latest won't leave you alone. The translation is perfect (although in reading the original, I found my Icelandic to be a little rusty, so I may have missed some of the subtleties).
For there are times, despite all the by-play, where you get swept up by these two children on their classically perfect pastoral retreat ... talking to the chickens and making jam and donning their winter garb and murdering stray visitors and playing dolls together and you think, with all the madness, well, this is just another side of our regular old contemporary 21st Century life, no?
See more reviews at www.RalphMag.org
There is a cow to milk, a cat to cuddle with, chickens to feed, eggs to gather, crops to grow. The ground is fertile, the farm is isolated, there in Reindeer Woods.
In the time we are with them, there are only four visitors, including a nun who promptly falls in love with Rafael, spends the night with him, and just as promptly goes away.
Only there's something a little fishy here. Well, maybe a lot. Because Raphael first appeared on the farm with two other soldiers. Of the people living there, "Four children, an older woman, and a young man head out from the house with their hands clasped behind their backs." Another woman appears with a tray with coffee, bread, butter, boiled eggs for them to eat.
The soldiers immediately shoot and kill them all --- except one of the children (Billie). The three soldiers go into the house, and one of them shoots and kills the other two. Billie hides in the bushes, "wets herself."
When Rafael digs a trench outside to bury all the bodies --- including his two former comrades --- she comes out of the bushes and stands behind him. He turns.
"Good evening, I am Rafael," said the man in the blue turtle-neck sweater, holding out his hand.
"Good evening, I am Billie," said the girl; she curtsied and shook his hand. The chicken tripped over to them. It didn't want to let itself get separated from its new friend ...
If you think that Rafael let the eleven-year-old Billie survive the mass killing because he has some devious plans for her then you don't know Kristín Ómarsdóttir. I didn't either.
Now I do, and am not so sure I want to. For this is one of the whackiest books I have come across in many years of whacky books. A soldier more or less immune to murder (although he does shoot off a few of his toes to try to break himself of the habit of murdering people.) A girl who seems unimpressed by his murderous history; in fact, seems to find him a quite pleasant companion (he will often play Barbie dolls with her).
He only turns a little menacing when she starts ragging on him about the nun who appeared one day, then disappeared:
Did she ask you about me?...
She asked whether I was your brother.
And what did you say?
Yes, that I was your brother. Then she asked me countless questions which I couldn't answer without giving myself away.
Why didn't you tell her the truth?
Then I would have had to kill her. You don't kill nuns. I could never justify that before a court of law, let alone myself.
Why don't you try to tell the truth to those around you and then not kill people?
Perhaps.
If you meet her again?
Then I'll tell her the truth.
You promise?
Yes.
Why didn't you rape her?
Don't behave like that, child.
As you may have gathered, Children in Reindeer Woods is as zany as they come. We learn nothing about Rafael's past: he certainly isn't volunteering any information to Billie (nor the reader). We learn a little about the people who have been knocked off but Billie is obviously not impressed by their bloody end (which she witnessed) nor their mass burial.
What we learn about her parents --- off someplace else --- isn't much help. She is convinced that her father is a puppet (strings and all) and her memories of him and her talky mother --- a doctor by trade --- are scattered. And weird.
She keeps asking Rafael if she is retarded, but what with her lists, her brainy ideas and insights, and her strange interests lead us to believe that she not so much retarded as autistic.
A monologue that she gives to the chickens while she is cleaning their hut is right out of Alice in Wonderland:
Good day, little chickens. I am the spring-man. I suppose I should vacuum, in here. Today's Saturday, and that's when people clean their residences and also the hen houses, though less frequently since animal-kind has fewer requirements. Perhaps because nature is expected to see to cleaning itself. But how are you going to get swept? God's natural brush, storms, never reach in here, do they? Poor you. In your shitty beds. But I still envy you. A little. Not much. A little.
§ § §
The tension here is two-fold. Is Rafael going to take it into his head to wake up and shoot Billie dead? Or is he going to show that he spared her life so he can ravish her? Let me just hint at the answers to these questions so you will get this one and find out for yourself. Because, despite all its alarums and diversions, Children in Reindeer Woods is quite wonderful.
The main tension set in place by this author is: how weird can a story get before finally getting overloaded and top-heavy and skittering off the road and crashing into a gully and setting the world on fire?
Ómarsdóttir is a poet and painter, lives in Iceland. Maybe it's all those dark winters amid the Arctic massifs that turn one's ideas on plotting and character into oatmeal mush. Or Þorrablót with hangikjöt, the favored eats there in Iceland.
The closest I can come to paralleling this mayhem would be the play Der Besuch der alten Dame, from the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It was produced to much horror and alarm fifty years ago in staid Zurich. The first scene is rich Claire coming to town to reclaim her old lover Alfred Ill. Claire expounds on her ex-husbands Moby, Hoby, and Zoby, then talks the villagers into helping her extinguish poor Alfred. One of her first acts as she gets off the train is to reach down and unscrew her hand. (In perhaps unconscious tribute, Ómarsdóttir offers a scene set in a nearby gas station with a collection of disjointed right and left arms, where one of the locals sticks his disjointed head in a waste basket).
Children in Reindeer Woods has that same dada feel to it. It's a place where Tristan Tzara meets Kafka meets Catch-22 meets Edgar Allen Poe meets a bewildered audience (me). But despite all these screwy side-trips, I think Ómarsdóttir's latest won't leave you alone. The translation is perfect (although in reading the original, I found my Icelandic to be a little rusty, so I may have missed some of the subtleties).
For there are times, despite all the by-play, where you get swept up by these two children on their classically perfect pastoral retreat ... talking to the chickens and making jam and donning their winter garb and murdering stray visitors and playing dolls together and you think, with all the madness, well, this is just another side of our regular old contemporary 21st Century life, no?
See more reviews at www.RalphMag.org
February 6, 2013
By Jena Salon
For The Literary Review
Spring 2012 "Encyclopedia Britannica"
One day recently I was out hiking with my husband in the woods by our new house,
and we came upon a stranger. At first he pointed in the direction of our house and
asked us if we knew the people who had bought it. It seemed to me he already had
to know the answer or else he wouldn’t be asking. But we live in a small town, and
people are nosy but polite, so we introduced ourselves and tried to be friendly. He
asked about our family, whether or not we had children, where we were originally
from. And then he tried to sell my husband, Jeff, on the idea of joining his Rod and
Gun club, an endeavor I found hilarious since Jeff has never fished or shot a gun, at
least not in the sixteen years I’ve known him. He was the kind of man, though, that
you just nod to, and say that sounds interesting, and to whom you don’t mention
you’re actually a vegetarian. As we hiked away from our neighbor, Jeff and I laughed
about the surreal conversation, the man’s strangeness, and agreed that despite the
freezing weather, the walk had been worth it.
This kind of chance meeting happens more frequently than we’d expect, and usually I think nothing of it. Then again, usually I’m not in the middle of reading Kristin Ómarsdóttir’s new novel, Children in Reindeer Woods, where during an undisclosed war in a non-specific time and place, a sense of violence lurks so strongly that you come to expect that what is lovely and peaceful could be shattered by horror. As the novel opens, three “soldiers cross the green meadow” and
approach “a farm with a two-story house that rises from a huge nest of hedges and tall trees.” As “four children, an older woman and a young man head out with their
hands clasped behind their necks” the soldiers shoot them. All except the youngest, eleven-year-old Billie, who is “spared, seemingly without a thought.” After a moment she “steals under a bush” hiding from Rafael, who then kills the other
soliders. He seems to be allowing her to stay alive intentionally. While he swears he
“would rather lose the war than kill Billie,” there is no promise, ever, that eventually
Rafael will not turn his gun on her.
The book forces you to remain skeptical throughout, to approach the world
with an eye towards the idyllic being a precursor to violence, instead of the calm
after the storm. And that night, after meeting my neighbor in the woods, I lay in
bed and I worried. I worried that the man was more sinister than wacky, and that
maybe he wanted to know about us to harm us. Every creak I heard that night was
him. My children, after all, were angelically sleeping in their beds.
I don’t mean to imply the book is a literary horror or literary thriller, for
it functions too subtly to engage in tense, creepy moments or gore. There is an
undeniable pulse though, an everywhere quality, which reminds you that this is
always how war functions, especially for the civilians. People are sitting in their
living rooms, reading a book by the fire, and a bomb strikes the house. Or getting
married, or taking a bus ride. People are just living their routine lives and then
everything is destroyed and horrible. The fact that the story is told from the third
person, filtered by Billie, even during scenes for which she is not in the room, functions to enhance the awkward unbalance of war. There is a line of visitors—another soldier, a nun, a census taker—who disappear at night while Billie is sleeping. Often
they leave something behind, whether it be a shoe or a guitar case and although in
the morning Rafael insists to Billie that they simply have “departed,” no one except
Rafael knows for sure. War is an environment where everything is suspect, which
in a way is the opposite of childhood where you take things at face value and the
inexplicable seems magical. Combining these two, leaves the reader desiring the
hope of childhood, while knowing the realities of war.
The fact that Billie reminds me of my daughter—precocious, wise, observant—made me want to watch Billie closer, made me love her, perhaps faster than I would have, but it is really Ómarsdóttir’s language—translated both starkly and
lyrically by Lytton Smith—which makes this book a beautiful experience that has
nothing to do with whether or not Billie and my daughter would cut off a Barbie
doll’s hair together. Smith conveys Ómarsdóttir’s distinctly European outlook without losing the universal quality of this fable-like story. Of Billie’s time hiding afterthe soldiers kill her family: “The girl licks the salty earth, decaying leaves, mossy
stones, the clods of earth.” Billie’s parents are far away, she is in “sort of a temporary
home for children”—a fact which allows Reindeer Woods to swirl far away from
reality, with no school to attend, no parents or curious neighbors calling, no trips
to the grocery store. And although as an adult I want her to run away, I see that it
is her child’s perspective, her mystical, imagination-based thinking, that allows her
to survive.
The disquiet brought on by this novel is so powerful and far-reaching because
so much of Children takes place within the everyday; it is impossible, then, to really
distinguish between the fear we feel in war and that which occurs from peacetime
senseless violence. Paranoia and magical thinking suddenly strike me, then, as two
sides of the same coin. With both we create worlds laden with forces we cannot
see or touch or control, forces which can lift us up or do us in. It is safer physically to be a paranoid in war, and safer emotionally, in childhood—especially in a
wartime childhood—to believe in magic. Billie believes that her father is a puppet
with a “puppeteer on another planet [who] controls him.” It is no mistake that his
name is Abraham, and that he, like the biblical Abraham, is trying to make peace
with seemingly arbitrary and childish beings who cannot understand human ways,
despite their ability to create them. He has been sent—so says Billie—to Earth by the
puppeteers to collect the rules of humans into a Book of Laws for the puppeteers.
Here, to try and understand the human condition, in order to create order and law
in the midst of war, in the midst of our current world, especially laws in regards to
morals, one must be from another planet. God is vacant from this world, and people
(not always adults) are left trying to sort out the mess. The only prayer we hear is
Billie’s mumbled “Dear God, let me be good.” Although she’s quite uncertain what
that means.
For more great reading
Subscribe to The Literary Review
For The Literary Review
Spring 2012 "Encyclopedia Britannica"
One day recently I was out hiking with my husband in the woods by our new house,
and we came upon a stranger. At first he pointed in the direction of our house and
asked us if we knew the people who had bought it. It seemed to me he already had
to know the answer or else he wouldn’t be asking. But we live in a small town, and
people are nosy but polite, so we introduced ourselves and tried to be friendly. He
asked about our family, whether or not we had children, where we were originally
from. And then he tried to sell my husband, Jeff, on the idea of joining his Rod and
Gun club, an endeavor I found hilarious since Jeff has never fished or shot a gun, at
least not in the sixteen years I’ve known him. He was the kind of man, though, that
you just nod to, and say that sounds interesting, and to whom you don’t mention
you’re actually a vegetarian. As we hiked away from our neighbor, Jeff and I laughed
about the surreal conversation, the man’s strangeness, and agreed that despite the
freezing weather, the walk had been worth it.
This kind of chance meeting happens more frequently than we’d expect, and usually I think nothing of it. Then again, usually I’m not in the middle of reading Kristin Ómarsdóttir’s new novel, Children in Reindeer Woods, where during an undisclosed war in a non-specific time and place, a sense of violence lurks so strongly that you come to expect that what is lovely and peaceful could be shattered by horror. As the novel opens, three “soldiers cross the green meadow” and
approach “a farm with a two-story house that rises from a huge nest of hedges and tall trees.” As “four children, an older woman and a young man head out with their
hands clasped behind their necks” the soldiers shoot them. All except the youngest, eleven-year-old Billie, who is “spared, seemingly without a thought.” After a moment she “steals under a bush” hiding from Rafael, who then kills the other
soliders. He seems to be allowing her to stay alive intentionally. While he swears he
“would rather lose the war than kill Billie,” there is no promise, ever, that eventually
Rafael will not turn his gun on her.
The book forces you to remain skeptical throughout, to approach the world
with an eye towards the idyllic being a precursor to violence, instead of the calm
after the storm. And that night, after meeting my neighbor in the woods, I lay in
bed and I worried. I worried that the man was more sinister than wacky, and that
maybe he wanted to know about us to harm us. Every creak I heard that night was
him. My children, after all, were angelically sleeping in their beds.
I don’t mean to imply the book is a literary horror or literary thriller, for
it functions too subtly to engage in tense, creepy moments or gore. There is an
undeniable pulse though, an everywhere quality, which reminds you that this is
always how war functions, especially for the civilians. People are sitting in their
living rooms, reading a book by the fire, and a bomb strikes the house. Or getting
married, or taking a bus ride. People are just living their routine lives and then
everything is destroyed and horrible. The fact that the story is told from the third
person, filtered by Billie, even during scenes for which she is not in the room, functions to enhance the awkward unbalance of war. There is a line of visitors—another soldier, a nun, a census taker—who disappear at night while Billie is sleeping. Often
they leave something behind, whether it be a shoe or a guitar case and although in
the morning Rafael insists to Billie that they simply have “departed,” no one except
Rafael knows for sure. War is an environment where everything is suspect, which
in a way is the opposite of childhood where you take things at face value and the
inexplicable seems magical. Combining these two, leaves the reader desiring the
hope of childhood, while knowing the realities of war.
The fact that Billie reminds me of my daughter—precocious, wise, observant—made me want to watch Billie closer, made me love her, perhaps faster than I would have, but it is really Ómarsdóttir’s language—translated both starkly and
lyrically by Lytton Smith—which makes this book a beautiful experience that has
nothing to do with whether or not Billie and my daughter would cut off a Barbie
doll’s hair together. Smith conveys Ómarsdóttir’s distinctly European outlook without losing the universal quality of this fable-like story. Of Billie’s time hiding afterthe soldiers kill her family: “The girl licks the salty earth, decaying leaves, mossy
stones, the clods of earth.” Billie’s parents are far away, she is in “sort of a temporary
home for children”—a fact which allows Reindeer Woods to swirl far away from
reality, with no school to attend, no parents or curious neighbors calling, no trips
to the grocery store. And although as an adult I want her to run away, I see that it
is her child’s perspective, her mystical, imagination-based thinking, that allows her
to survive.
The disquiet brought on by this novel is so powerful and far-reaching because
so much of Children takes place within the everyday; it is impossible, then, to really
distinguish between the fear we feel in war and that which occurs from peacetime
senseless violence. Paranoia and magical thinking suddenly strike me, then, as two
sides of the same coin. With both we create worlds laden with forces we cannot
see or touch or control, forces which can lift us up or do us in. It is safer physically to be a paranoid in war, and safer emotionally, in childhood—especially in a
wartime childhood—to believe in magic. Billie believes that her father is a puppet
with a “puppeteer on another planet [who] controls him.” It is no mistake that his
name is Abraham, and that he, like the biblical Abraham, is trying to make peace
with seemingly arbitrary and childish beings who cannot understand human ways,
despite their ability to create them. He has been sent—so says Billie—to Earth by the
puppeteers to collect the rules of humans into a Book of Laws for the puppeteers.
Here, to try and understand the human condition, in order to create order and law
in the midst of war, in the midst of our current world, especially laws in regards to
morals, one must be from another planet. God is vacant from this world, and people
(not always adults) are left trying to sort out the mess. The only prayer we hear is
Billie’s mumbled “Dear God, let me be good.” Although she’s quite uncertain what
that means.
For more great reading
Subscribe to The Literary Review
July 11, 2017
Abraham cut the unwritten pages out and closed the book. Four years later, Soffia opened door number twelve and looked with such great interest at the thin face of Abraham that she ran into an old coat-rack and knocked it over. She stooped, righted it, and looked up at the man. He never forgot the eyes he saw.
Crimes do not exist. I say the same thing about love. If I didn't forget you, I can thank my own particular memory, said Abraham, a few years later.
One loves out of habit, a god complex, sexual appetite, shyness, envy, and opportunism, said Soffia.
They were sitting and debating; it was one of the birthday parties they held to celebrate Vanity.
My love, sew my arm back on, asked Abraham.
Crimes do not exist. I say the same thing about love. If I didn't forget you, I can thank my own particular memory, said Abraham, a few years later.
One loves out of habit, a god complex, sexual appetite, shyness, envy, and opportunism, said Soffia.
They were sitting and debating; it was one of the birthday parties they held to celebrate Vanity.
My love, sew my arm back on, asked Abraham.
November 18, 2017
4.2 stars. It's a funny thing; I started this book over 6 months ago with some enthusiasm, ran out of gas about 80 pages in, and set the book aside for months. (Returned it to the library in fact.) Then the urge to read it just struck again, and I (re-checked the book out and) read the whole book in little more than a day. It's quite an experience. One needs to overlook certain infelicities in the dialogue, and you need to wear your "fable/fairytale" hat while reading, as continually as you possibly can (kind of a fractured fairytale; see the the ahead-of-its-time Rocky and Bullwinkle show from 50-odd years or so back) . . . But if you can do these things, I think it's a pretty enjoyable ride.
Reread-worthiness: 3/5.
Reread-worthiness: 3/5.
March 26, 2021
A modern fairytale that takes place at a summer camp called Children in Reindeer Woods, which is linked by road to the Ceaseless Heath, the Endless Pass, and the Forever Valley. Somewhere in the distance a war is going on.
The heroine is an 11-year-old girl named Billie. Her father believes he is a puppet. Whenever his arm is torn off, Billie's mother sews it back on.
Arrivals at the camp include soldiers, a pair of tax collectors, a nun, and a shepherd. Many of the scenes are described with a childlike innocence.
"The cow lowed from out back as though it was missing the fun. Mooooo."
The final chapter caps the surreal nature of the book.
A few spoilers at https://stevezipp.blogspot.com/2021/0...
The heroine is an 11-year-old girl named Billie. Her father believes he is a puppet. Whenever his arm is torn off, Billie's mother sews it back on.
Arrivals at the camp include soldiers, a pair of tax collectors, a nun, and a shepherd. Many of the scenes are described with a childlike innocence.
"The cow lowed from out back as though it was missing the fun. Mooooo."
The final chapter caps the surreal nature of the book.
A few spoilers at https://stevezipp.blogspot.com/2021/0...
January 26, 2021
It’s an odd novel. Eleven year old Billie watches Rafael, a soldier in an unspecified war in an unspecified country, murder her caretakers and the other children in the Children in Reindeer Woods home, then the two of take up living together. The story is narrated third person from Billie’s perspective, and Omarsdottir captures a child’s voice well, but at times it gets a bit fey and cloying, too clever for the dark story it is narrating. I guess I wanted more reckoning at the end with the violence that dominates the novel.
July 8, 2022
3.4 - maybe a higher rating? Such a unique and particular book. Placed in a world that feels magical/mythical but with deep ties to a reality many know of war and pain. Such compelling main characters. But I was not always clear on some back story and fairly certain I am still unaware of the metaphors or deeper meanings behind some of the actions and movement of the novel. I both highly recommend it and simultaneously caution that readers may not enjoy it. It’s slow, but engrossing…short, but deep. Okay, read it.
November 28, 2025
An unusual book. I enjoyed it for the most part. It started very dramatically, and then kind of settled in. I was never sure why Billie was spared, but I guess it's not that important. I'd like to write more, but I don't know what to say. It's a strange story, a little hard to get a grip on, and it's one of those where you think maybe there's lots going on under the surface that I'm not getting. Oh well, I enjoyed the read, anyway.
August 5, 2017
The first thing about this novel of note is that is written by an Icelandic author but does not take place in Iceland but rather in an (unnamed country) at war. The book begins with great violence but ends in a strange and other-wordly peace. Nothing in this book makes a great deal of sense but it doesn't matter. Suspend belief and enjoy a beautifully written and crafted book.
January 6, 2025
i think this would've been good if i was less confused the whole time
December 20, 2025
DNF i’m so confused
June 28, 2012
This is translated from Icelandic, which always complicates things in terms of diction and style. But still.
Spoilers!
Billie, an 11-year-old girl, is sent to a summer camp in Reindeer Woods, presumably while her parents deal with her father's mental illness, her mother's depression, and life in general. There's a war on, which we discover when the camp is taken over by three soldiers who kill everyone but Billie. One of the three, Rafael, then kills the other two, and from then on Billie and Rafael live together in Reindeer Woods. Rafael is determined to transform himself from a soldier into a farmer, but he keeps killing anyone who happens across the camp, so this doesn't really take.
The novel is told in close third-person, from over Billie's shoulder. Billie is preoccupied with her dolls, her parents, and Rafael--not as an aggressor so much as a conversational partner and the only adult in her world. Their relationship is odd but friendly. They chide each other, call each other names, banter and appease and one-up each other. Basically they behave as if Rafael were Billie's indulgent babysitter, except that there are a bunch of graves in the back yard and every time someone new arrives at the camp, Rafael tells Billie to go lock herself in the hen house for a while.
The prose is fitting for an odd, traumatized eleven year-old girl, but hard to understand in places. There's wordplay, brief forays into random phrases repeated in foreign languages, obsessive formality over minutiae, imaginative interludes. There's also a kind of addendum involving puppetmasters from another planet...I honestly can't say what that's about.
Overall I'd file this one under 'avant-garde' or 'experimental,' in the sense of 'I didn't really get what the heck was going on most of the time.' I picked it up because Helen Oyeyemi liked it in the NY Times, but alas, I fear I am too simple for this one.
Spoilers!
Billie, an 11-year-old girl, is sent to a summer camp in Reindeer Woods, presumably while her parents deal with her father's mental illness, her mother's depression, and life in general. There's a war on, which we discover when the camp is taken over by three soldiers who kill everyone but Billie. One of the three, Rafael, then kills the other two, and from then on Billie and Rafael live together in Reindeer Woods. Rafael is determined to transform himself from a soldier into a farmer, but he keeps killing anyone who happens across the camp, so this doesn't really take.
The novel is told in close third-person, from over Billie's shoulder. Billie is preoccupied with her dolls, her parents, and Rafael--not as an aggressor so much as a conversational partner and the only adult in her world. Their relationship is odd but friendly. They chide each other, call each other names, banter and appease and one-up each other. Basically they behave as if Rafael were Billie's indulgent babysitter, except that there are a bunch of graves in the back yard and every time someone new arrives at the camp, Rafael tells Billie to go lock herself in the hen house for a while.
The prose is fitting for an odd, traumatized eleven year-old girl, but hard to understand in places. There's wordplay, brief forays into random phrases repeated in foreign languages, obsessive formality over minutiae, imaginative interludes. There's also a kind of addendum involving puppetmasters from another planet...I honestly can't say what that's about.
Overall I'd file this one under 'avant-garde' or 'experimental,' in the sense of 'I didn't really get what the heck was going on most of the time.' I picked it up because Helen Oyeyemi liked it in the NY Times, but alas, I fear I am too simple for this one.
September 16, 2015
I don’t understand it at all. Like everything else I’ve read by an Icelandic author, Children in Reindeer Woods has a flat, matter of fact tone to it. Reindeer Woods feels like an extended riff on James Clavell’s The Children’s Story, except I think it might actually be making the opposite point. Sagas and Laxness excepted, all of the Icelandic books I’ve read have been short enough to read in a sitting, or two days at most. All of them have a spare elegance I associate with 20th century Japanese novelists like Kawabata or Niwa, whose minimalist stories told only prosaic events and details and hid the meaning in the spaces between the notes. The difference is that translations of modern Japanese authors are always accompanied by lengthy introductions that help explain the cultural signposts of the events in the story and give some of the context needed to make sense of the book. All the help I got for Kristín’s book is a back cover blurb that says, “A lyrical and continually surprising take on the absurdity of war and the mysteries of childhood.” Because those two themes are obviously related.
I have to assume the blurb is right because the two main characters are a soldier who pretends to be a farmer and a precocious child who fears she may be retarded living together on a farm called Children in Reindeer Woods after he kills everyone else who lives there. What the fuck?
In any case, about 150 pages into the book, I realized that there was more than simple tension driving me forward through the book. I was, strangely, genuinely concerned for these two characters who might not really be humans or who maybe represent all humans. Rafael and Billie are both just children after all, and it is hard not to care if they figure out how to survive the coming winter on the farm and maybe even not kill any more people.
I have to assume the blurb is right because the two main characters are a soldier who pretends to be a farmer and a precocious child who fears she may be retarded living together on a farm called Children in Reindeer Woods after he kills everyone else who lives there. What the fuck?
In any case, about 150 pages into the book, I realized that there was more than simple tension driving me forward through the book. I was, strangely, genuinely concerned for these two characters who might not really be humans or who maybe represent all humans. Rafael and Billie are both just children after all, and it is hard not to care if they figure out how to survive the coming winter on the farm and maybe even not kill any more people.
February 18, 2013
What to say about this book.... Well, I liked it. It was almost like reading a hallucination. A girl is left to stay at this temporary children's home while her mother and father (who is actually an alien-controlled puppet) go...somewhere. Her life turns upside down when these three paratroopers show up at the house (they ARE in a war zone, after all) and murder everyone except her. A particularly violent member of this group goes a step further and murders his comrades so that he can give up his military life for that of a farmer. Only problem is he can't seem to put his gun away and stop threatening and killing pretty much everyone that he meets throughout the book.
This book is a classic case of either the innocence and naïveté of children or Stockholm Syndrome. Billie, the 11 year old protagonist, is somewhere between your average 11 year old and a full-grown woman. Sometimes she's playing with Barbies, other times she is talking with the older soldier as if they are true equals. The man has a gun to her head for the first half of the book, yet she treats him as if they are best friends,
Some parts of this book are really worth the read. It goes by quickly and really is quite unique, if not discomforting through a great many parts.
This book is a classic case of either the innocence and naïveté of children or Stockholm Syndrome. Billie, the 11 year old protagonist, is somewhere between your average 11 year old and a full-grown woman. Sometimes she's playing with Barbies, other times she is talking with the older soldier as if they are true equals. The man has a gun to her head for the first half of the book, yet she treats him as if they are best friends,
Some parts of this book are really worth the read. It goes by quickly and really is quite unique, if not discomforting through a great many parts.
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